Run Rabbit Run
by Lancelotlaureate
Summary: Vicki inadvertently lets some pesky rabbits onto the TARDIS.


A small white bunny rabbit hopped into the console room after Vicki, whilst the Doctor and Steven headed into the other rooms to change after another adventure on Earth. Bunny Island in Japan had been Vicki's favourite place so far and she was delighted that one of the rabbits had followed her back to the ship.

"I haven't got any more food for you Snuffles," she said as she scooped him up into her arms and kissed him on the head. She wasn't quite sure why she'd named him 'Snuffles' but she supposed he had the cutest nose that snuffled continuously, so that must have been her inspiration. "The Doctor won't be happy to see you here. I'll hide you somewhere he'll never find you. You can be my pet but you've got to be a secret."

"Shut the doors child," the Doctor called from the other room, and as Vicki went to flip the switch on the console, the bunny still in her arms, she was astounded to be greeted with a long line of rabbits making their way through the doors of the ship.

"Oh dear. No, back out, back out, too many of you!" she said, trying not to laugh as they stared up at her in confusion at where they were.

She put down Snuffles onto the floor and attempted to shoo the other rabbits back toward the door. Her attempts were useless as by the time she'd crossed to the switch on the console that closed the doors, the bunnies had all run back inside again. As the doors closed and she heard the Doctor coming into the room, the bunnies all darted off into various hiding places as though they thought the Doctor was a predator of some kind. When he finally entered the room, all the rabbits were out of sight and so the Doctor set the ship in motion, none the wiser to what had happened.

"Uh…Doctor," Vicki began, seeing one bunny race out of the double doors and into the rest of the ship.

"Yes child, what is it?"

"Oh…nothing. Doctor why don't you finish that and then join Steven for a game of chess? He said he was going to beat you one of these days."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes at his young companion and then nodded. "I suppose a game or two won't go amiss. Why don't you go and clean yourself up child?"

Vicki nodded and then waited for the Doctor to leave before she started searching for the rabbits. "What am I going to do with you all?" she said aloud.

Looking around for inspiration she noticed a large box in the corner of the room that the Doctor had been using to store equipment. She grabbed the box and carried it into her bedroom. After she'd placed the box beside her bed, she made ten trips or so back to the console room to scoop up two bunnies at a time and place them safely in the box. She then hurried to the food machine to produce carrot flavoured blocks of food and lots of fresh water.

…

When Vicki awoke the next morning after looking after lots of rabbits until she fell asleep, she leaned over her bed to see that the pen that she'd tried to make escape-proof was now completely empty. She laughed then gasped when she realised the seriousness of the problem. The Doctor was going to kill her when he found out there were rabbits roaming around his time machine. She slipped on her dressing gown and headed out the door and was greeted with a manly scream coming from inside Steven's bedroom. When she arrived at her companion's room, he was sitting up in bed surrounded by fifteen rabbits beside him. One was even by his face, nuzzling his ear, and one was biting the blanket with its teeth. Two bunnies were getting amorous at the end of the bed and that was too much for Vicki, she was suddenly in hysterics. Steven carefully climbed out of the bed, having to gently shove a grey fluffy rabbit out of his way to do so and then he approached Vicki with his arms folded.

"Where did these come from? We're not on that island anymore!"

Vicki's eyes gazed upwards, trying to shift the blame. "I suppose they just wandered in."

"More like you let them wander in. Vicki, what were you thinking?"

"I tried to get them out but they overpowered me. There are twenty of them Steven!"

"Yes, well there'll be hundreds of them soon the way they breed. We have to put them somewhere before the Doctor finds out."

"Oh but they are cute aren't they Steven?" she picked up a white rabbit with brown splodges over him. "Look at his little spots, and look at his one ear that flops down."

Steven frowned when he saw a black lop eared bunny scratching and digging at his jumper. "Off of that!" he yelled at the bunny as he pushed the rabbit's bottom with his hand. The rabbit refused to budge and looked up at him with unapologetic eyes. Steven grumbled and left the room quickly, throwing his hands in the air and indicating she was on her own.

…

The Doctor was in the console room tinkering with the main control unit of his machine which he had been working on for weeks. He was adamant he could repair the navigational circuits and be able to travel to wherever and whenever he wanted, and he was having quite the success, and everything was going to plan. All he asked was that Steven and Vicki didn't interrupt him.

As he moved around the console, his eyes were drawn to a small brown pellet shaped something on the silver floor. He narrowed his eyes but was unable to see clearer. "What is this? What is this?"

He held his monocle over his eye and bent down to examine whatever it was that littered his normally clean floor. He gasped when he realised what it was. "I hope I haven't got a pest infestation."

But as he attempted to clean up the mess, a flash of brown crossed his vision and as he turned to look, it caught him off balance and he felt giddy for a moment. He could see from the corner of his eye, a brown rabbit circling the console unit and leaning up as though to investigate it. When he saw brown rabbit number two, he assumed he was experiencing double vision, but as his eyes settled and his head stopped throbbing, he saw two more rabbits hop into the room, one of them holding a slipper between its teeth. The Doctor let out a shriek of surprise and then called for Vicki immediately, knowing that his pet loving companion was almost certainly to blame for the infestation of small furry rabbits.

When Vicki entered the room with Steven behind her, she knew she was in trouble. The Doctor was staring at her in that way he did when he was not amused. Most of the time he was perfectly fine with Vicki's shenanigans, but not when it involved his TARDIS- the TARDIS was not a place to cause havoc in.

"My dear child, who let all the rabbits in here, hmmm?"

"Honestly Doctor, it was an accident. They just ran in before I had time to see they were there."

Their discussion was interrupted as the rest of the rabbits ran into the room together and all headed into different areas of the console room.

"Quick, get the rabbits," the Doctor said as he attempted to chase a black and white bunny around in circles.

Steven shrieked as he noticed a brown rabbit sitting on top of the time rotor as it rose and fell. The bunny's body moved up and down, and up and down on the platform as the ship was in flight. Another rabbit was on top of the console itself and Vicki raced over to grab it before it stood on an important button or set the fast return switch into motion.

"Come here pesky thing!" the Doctor cried as he continued to chase the same rabbit as it circled the Eames chair, causing the Doctor to feel very dizzy.

Steven thought he was making progress but every time he picked up one rabbit and put it into a box, it hopped out and he was sure he was simply picking up the same one every time to return it to an empty box. "Vicki!" he said with irritation. "How are we supposed to keep these under control? And what if they start multiplying?!"

"You've got to be gentle with them Steven. No wonder they're scared of you, scowling at them like that. Get on your knees, get down to their level and call them gently. If they think we have food they'll come straight over to investigate."

Steven obeyed and got down on his knees, hoping the rabbits would hop over to him and say hello. Meanwhile the Doctor headed to the food machine to get some food to entice the furry creatures into a trap. Noticing the machine wasn't working, he opened up the little hatch to access what the trouble was and was greeted with the sight of a grey rabbit sitting inside the machine, perched on a tiny little tray, biting through a series of cables in the machine. As the Doctor reached in to grab the rabbit, the machine ground to a halt and stopped working. The rabbit was too fast for the Doctor and hopped out on his own and headed back to join his friends in the console room.

Steven wasn't having much luck with the rabbits on the floor, they were sniffing him but every time he attempted to pick them up, they shot away in fear of his actions.

"Try calling them by their names," Vicki suggested.

Steven shot her an unimpressed look. "Names? They don't have names."

"Well make them up. It's not hard, like see… that one there is really dark so he could be called Midnight."

Steven stared at his young friend with a menacing glare. "Fine, even though I feel like a complete idiot."

"You named a stuffed panda bear toy so why not a living animal?"

He sighed and began to call out to one of the rabbits. It was a small light brown coloured animal with fur that was moulting and clearly had never been groomed. "Come here Scruffy," he called in a high-pitched soothing tone. "Come to Steven. You can have treats."

He stopped when he saw that Vicki was laughing at him.

When the Doctor returned with some food that he'd manually had to concoct from another source aboard the ship, Steven and Vicki had managed to collect most of the rabbits into a large box with a cover over the top.

"Almost there Doctor," Vicki told him. "We just have to get Barney and Rufus."

The Doctor resisted the urge to scold her for naming the rabbits and joined his friends in the search of the missing two bunnies. The first one, Barney was easy to find as he had snuggled up under the Doctor's coat on the chair. He was a bit of a chubby rabbit and didn't seem to want to move at all so they had no trouble lifting him from his seat. The Doctor frowned as he saw the white fur left behind on his favourite coat.

"Where is he?" Steven asked as he scanned the ship, looking for the final rabbit.

"There he is!" Vicki called out, pointing to a black rabbit half inside a hatch at the bottom of the console unit. "Looks like he thinks it's a warren."

The Doctor's eyes widened in terror and he rushed over to the console as quickly as he could, yanking the bunny from its new metal warren. "Get out of my console you fluffy menace, before you do some real damage."

As the bunny looked at him, the console's lights flickered on and off before turning off completely.

"I don't want to worry you Doctor but there's bite marks in that cable," Steven said.

The Doctor examined the console, checking the work he'd achieved over the last few weeks on the navigational unit. He sighed wearily and then let out an unanticipated chuckle. "The rabbit has destroyed my work. The navigational system is ruined."

"Remind me why that's so funny Doctor?" Steven asked with less joviality than the old man.

"I don't know," he replied still laughing. "We're never going to know where we're going, and it's all entirely because of a silly little rabbit."


End file.
